It’s holiday time in the suburbs. This weekend marks the end of the ever-growing Halloween season and kicks off the Christmas overload whirlwind. Thanksgiving seems to have surrendered. Hopefully, schoolchildren still make handprint turkeys and little cardboard Pilgrim hats and don’t just slip into practicing the songs for the school’s ‘Winter Festival’ concert too quickly .
I don’t mean to be too curmudgeonly, but the velocity and shear volume of holiday decorations is getting to me. This is a trend that came out of nowhere and shows no sign of stopping. Back in the day, like the 70’s and 80’s, few people went beyond carving a pumpkin and displaying gourds and cornstalks in their yards. Now home graveyards and purple lights seem to be the minimum. I still see the pumpkins in the stores, but not too many jack-o-lanterns on the doorsteps of suburbia. Perhaps safety warnings about candles killed these old favorites -- but I think it’s the lure of automated gargoyles and screaming skulls. Then again, it may be the timing used by the stores. The Halloween stuff hits the shelves in mid-August, as soon as the back-to-school items have cleared out; there's hardly a moment to catch an autumn breath.
While the Halloween excess is kind of strange, the seamless flow of Halloween into Christmas is disturbing. One of my favorite blogs, The Consumerist, declares that Thanksgiving has surrendered to Christmas and offers a great gallery of pictures showing the mixing of ghouls and Santa. Some of these pictures were posted in August.
With Halloween over, Christmas has begun. Wal-Mart kicked the season off with their first Holiday Door Buster Sales on November 2nd. No need to wait until the morning after Thanksgiving to pick-up outrageous deals by elbowing your way through the pre-dawn crowds. Get that dirt cheap computer now, not after the pumpkin pie. Thanksgiving as a holiday only exists in the home and the grocery stores. I guess it’s kind of nice it hasn’t been totally consumed or we would have little light up pilgrims chasing robotic turkeys across the lawns of America.
So, for me, I’m going to try to steer clear of the Christmas runaway train. I’m not setting out the pine scented candles or hanging the wreath until I finished off the turkey leftovers. Thanksgiving is an awfully nice celebration, wholly American and family-centered, it’s nice that it's still about cooking and sharing – not buying stuff or dressing up like a pirate. Here's some handprint turkey art to get you in the mood.
I don’t mean to be too curmudgeonly, but the velocity and shear volume of holiday decorations is getting to me. This is a trend that came out of nowhere and shows no sign of stopping. Back in the day, like the 70’s and 80’s, few people went beyond carving a pumpkin and displaying gourds and cornstalks in their yards. Now home graveyards and purple lights seem to be the minimum. I still see the pumpkins in the stores, but not too many jack-o-lanterns on the doorsteps of suburbia. Perhaps safety warnings about candles killed these old favorites -- but I think it’s the lure of automated gargoyles and screaming skulls. Then again, it may be the timing used by the stores. The Halloween stuff hits the shelves in mid-August, as soon as the back-to-school items have cleared out; there's hardly a moment to catch an autumn breath.
While the Halloween excess is kind of strange, the seamless flow of Halloween into Christmas is disturbing. One of my favorite blogs, The Consumerist, declares that Thanksgiving has surrendered to Christmas and offers a great gallery of pictures showing the mixing of ghouls and Santa. Some of these pictures were posted in August.
With Halloween over, Christmas has begun. Wal-Mart kicked the season off with their first Holiday Door Buster Sales on November 2nd. No need to wait until the morning after Thanksgiving to pick-up outrageous deals by elbowing your way through the pre-dawn crowds. Get that dirt cheap computer now, not after the pumpkin pie. Thanksgiving as a holiday only exists in the home and the grocery stores. I guess it’s kind of nice it hasn’t been totally consumed or we would have little light up pilgrims chasing robotic turkeys across the lawns of America.
So, for me, I’m going to try to steer clear of the Christmas runaway train. I’m not setting out the pine scented candles or hanging the wreath until I finished off the turkey leftovers. Thanksgiving is an awfully nice celebration, wholly American and family-centered, it’s nice that it's still about cooking and sharing – not buying stuff or dressing up like a pirate. Here's some handprint turkey art to get you in the mood.
** top Photo by vidaarctique
1 comments:
A beautiful post. Hear hear. I love Thanksgiving. It's a non-denominational holiday, and it's non-consumerist. The ultimate rebel holiday. Could it also be I like it because it's near my birthday? hmmmm.....
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